PERFECT dome of palest blue, vapourous but luminous. To northward and southeastward a horizon line of low uplands, misty purple. Along the farthest west a glimmer and sparkle of the sea. Everywhere else, wide, wind-washed levels of marsh, pallid green or ochre yellow, cut here and there with winding tide-channels and mud-flats of glistening copper red. Twisting this way and that in erratic curves, the unbroken, sodded lines of the dyke, fencing off the red flats and tide-channels, and dividing the green expanses of protected dyke-marsh from the ochre yellow stretches of the salt marsh, as yet but half-reclaimed from the sea.

At this autumn season the hay had all been cut and cured and most of it hauled away to safe storage in far-off, upland barns. But on the remoter and wetter marshes some of it had been piled in huge yellow-gray, cone-peaked stacks, to await the easier hauling of winter. The solitary, snug-built stacks, towering above the dyke-tops and whistled over ceaselessly by the long marsh winds, were a favoured resort of the meadow-mice. These adaptable little animals were able to endure with equanimity the inevitable annual destruction of their homes in the deep grass, seeing that the haymakers were so thoughtful as to afford them much dryer and more secure abodes in the heart of the stacks, where neither the keen-nosed fox nor the keen-eyed marsh-owl could get at them.

Past the foot of a certain lonely stack by the outer dyke, within sound of the rushing tide, ran an old drainage ditch, at this time of year almost dry. Its bottom, where tiny puddles were threaded on a trickle of running water, was now a thronged resort of water-loving insects, and small frogs, and imprisoned shiners. To a wandering mink, driven down by drought from the uplands, it was a wonderful and delightful place, which he adopted at once as his own particular range. The main ditch, with its system of lateral feeders, furnished several miles of runway, and the whole of this rich domain the newcomer preempted, patrolling it methodically, devoting his whole attention to it, and ready to defend it against any rival claimant who might appear.

The mink was a male, about twenty inches long, with his rich dark coat in perfect condition. His pointed, sinister, quietly savage face and head were set on a long but heavy-muscled neck, almost as thick as the thickest part of his body. The body itself was altogether snake-like in its lithe sinuousness, and supported on legs so ridiculously short that when he was not leaping he seemed to writhe and dart along on his belly after the fashion of a snake. In spite of this shortness of the legs, however, his movements, when he had any reason for haste, were of an almost miraculous swiftness, his whole form seeming to be made up of subtle and tireless steel springs. When he did not care to writhe and dart along like a snake, he would arch his long back like a measuring-worm and go leaping over the ground in jumps of sometimes four or five feet in length. This method of progression he probably adopted for the fun of it, in the main; for his hunting tactics were usually those of stealthy advance and lightning-like attack. Once in a long while, indeed, by lucky chance he would succeed in catching in one of these wild leaps, a snipe which flew too low over the ditch or paused on hovering wing before alighting to forage on the populous ooze. Such an achievement would afford a pleasant variation to his customary diet of fish, frogs, beetles, and occasional muskrat.

The mink had been nearly three weeks on his new range, and enjoying himself hugely in his devastating way, before he observed the big yellow stack beside the ditch. It was on a day of driving rain-squalls and premature cold that he first took note of its possibilities. Gliding furtively around its base, his bright, fierce eyes detected a tiny hole, the imperfectly hidden entrance to a mouse-tunnel. He thrust in his head at once to investigate. It was a close squeeze; but where his head and neck could go his slender body could follow, and he dearly loved the exploring of just such narrow passages.

A little way in, the tunnel branched; but the mink made no mistake. The gallery which he selected to follow ended in a mouse-nest, with the mice at home. There in the dry, warm, sweet-scented dark there was a brief tragedy, with shrill squeaks and a rustling struggle. Two mice escaped the slaughter, but the other three were caught. The invader sucked the blood of all three while they were warm, ate one, and then curled himself up for sleep in his new and delightful quarters. This stack was all that the new range needed to make it the very choicest that a mink could possess.

After this the mink occupied the stack in bad weather, but ranged the ditches, as usual, when it was pleasant. The stack was full of mouse-galleries, and when he wanted a change he hunted mice. But it was the outdoor, wide-ranging life that best contented him, so the mice were by no means all driven out. Being a happy-go-lucky tribe, the survivors continued to occupy their nests in spite of their terrible new neighbour, trusting that doom would overlook them.

But neither men nor mice nor minks can be prepared against all the caprices of Nature. That fall, Nature suddenly took it into her head to try the dykes, of which the men had for a generation or more been so boastful. She rolled in from the sea a succession of tremendous tides, backing them up with a mighty and unrelenting wind out of the southwest, and piled the tide-channels to the brim with buffeting floods. For a time the dykes withstood the assault valiantly. But again and again, ever fiercer and fiercer, came the besieging tides; and finally they made a breach. In rushed a red and foaming torrent, devouring the clay walls on either side with a roar, and drowning the long-protected dyke-marsh under a seething chaos of muddy waves and dÉbris.

The first breach occurred at daybreak; and the stack stood right in the way. The huge flood poured in in angry glory, almost blood-red in the first gush of a blazing crimson sunrise. In that unnatural and terrifying light, which swiftly softened to a mocking delicacy of pink and lilac, the stack was torn from its foundations and borne revolving up the tide.

The nest of the mink, being low in the stack, was promptly flooded, driving the angry tenant out. He ran up to the dry top of the stack, and surveyed the wild scene with surprise. Water, of course, had no terrors for him; but this tumultuous flood seemed a good thing to keep out of. He would stay by his refuge for the present, at least. Meanwhile, there were mice!

The mice, indeed, panic-stricken and forced from their lower nests, were fairly swarming in the top of the stack. The mink first satiated his thirst with blood. Next he glutted his hunger with the brains of his victims. Then, seeing their numbers apparently undiminished, he got wild with excitement and blood-lust. Darting hither and thither, madly joyous, he killed, and killed, and killed, for the joy of killing; while the stack, with its freight of terror and death, went whirling majestically along the now broader and quieter flood.

How long the slaughter of the helpless mice would have continued, before the slaughterer tired of the game and crept into a nest to sleep, cannot be known. By another of Nature's whims, concerned equally with great matters and with little, it was not left to the joyous mink to decide. His conspicuous dark body, darting over the light surface of the stack, caught the eye of a great hawk soaring high above the marshes. Lower and lower sank the bird, considering,—for the mink was larger game than he usually chose to hunt. Then, while still too high in the blue to attract attention from the busy slayer, he narrowed his wings, hardened his plumage, and shot downward. At a strange sound in the air the mink looked up,—but not in time to meet that appalling attack. One great set of talons, steel-strong and edged like knives, clutched him about the throat, strangling him to helplessness, while another set crushed his ribs and cut into his vitals. The wise hawk had struck with a thorough comprehension of the enemy's fighting powers; and had taken care that there should be no fight. Flying heavily, he carried the long, limp body off to his high nest in the hills; and the stack drifted on with the tiny terrified remnant of the mouse-people, till the ebbing tide left it stranded on a meadow near the foot of the uplands.